Park Hyatt Beijing

Here’s a hotel that knows how to make an entrance. The Park Hyatt Beijing follows the format of its cousins in Shanghai and Tokyo, occupying roughly the top half of a 66-story skyscraper. Nice view if you can get it, right? The stroke of genius is that the lobby is on the 63rd floor, so everyone shares in the panorama — from up here you can actually see the curvature of Beijing.

And if it’s rumored to be a tad less polished than the Tokyo and Shanghai installments, it’s simply a function of the location. What Beijing may lack in refinement and sophistication — and it’s catching up quickly, mind you — it more than makes up for in sheer exuberance. This Park Hyatt, for its part, is every bit up to the standard implied by the name — it’s just that some of its charms (the view, the glass-enclosed arch of the pool deck) are bolder than usual.

No less elegant, though. The rooms are everything you expect them to be — more, if you factor in the vertigo-inducing views — and the hotel is run, as is the custom, with pinpoint efficiency. The Park Hyatts, at least in East Asia, are practically at the point where all you need to hear is the name, and for a high-end chain hotel, that’s the whole point of the exercise.